Travelin’ man has visited nearly every country in the world

Ed Reynolds is on a quest to travel to all 193 countries in the United Nations. He’s already been to 187, and he hopes to have visited the rest by the summer. Reynolds was photographed at his Woodland Hills home on March 5, 2014 in front of his world map with pins through locations he has visited. (Photo by David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News)

READ ABOUT ED REYNOLDS’ TRAVELS

In a few months, after the travelin’ man gets back from Samoa and Kiribati — a small, tropical island nation in the Pacific Ocean — he’ll stick the final two pins in his map of the world, and join a very exclusive club.

Ed Reynolds will be on a short list of people who have visited every member state in the United Nations — all 193 of them.

From tiny, remote African villages with no running water, but a vote on world affairs to some of the most dangerous places on the globe — Iraq, Iran, and Libya.

6 COUNTRIES LEFT

Maldives Islands

Sri Lanka

Bangladesh

Myanmar (Burma)

Samoa

Kiribati

Ed figures if you’re going to travel halfway around the world to see how people live, you should get in the dirt with them to really know.

“Some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met were in the deserts of Iran,” he says. “It was only when you got in the capital (Tehran) that you started looking over your shoulder.”

Ed’s seen 82 percent of the world, by his own calculation — 290 foreign destinations in all — some of them during his 22-year career as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer in Vietnam and later, working in the Pentagon.

Most of them, though, as a tourist after he turned 65 in 2001 until now, age 78. He’ll blow by 2 million flight miles on United Airlines this year, and has probably spent a full year or more of his life waiting for connecting flights.

“I go through suitcases like crazy,” Ed says. “Some of them have lifetime guarantees, but I’m always taking them back damaged from being thrown around so much by luggage handlers. The zippers usually go first.”

This January, while visiting the Republic of Vanuatu in the New Hebrides Islands, and a member of the U.N. General Assembly (what, you didn’t know that?) — Ed finally spent the last of the $400,000 he set up in a travel account from the sale of his late mother’s house in Lompoc at a hot time in the housing market in 2006.

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Yeah, it’s a lot of money, but she would have understood. It was his mother and father who gave him the travel bug. And, boy, has he had a great time spreading that dough around the world, the travelin’ man says.

“I’m driving my Wells Fargo financial adviser nuts because I’m dipping into my investments now to travel,” says Ed, a member of the Most Traveled People club, and the Travelers’ Century Club in Santa Monica, where you don’t get in until you’ve visited at least 100 different geographical places in the world.

“I tell people you’re going to need $2 million (to travel almost constantly) and a very understanding spouse, unless you’re taking them along,” says Klaus Billep chairman of Travelers’ Century, a social club that started in 1954.

“We’ve got members in Long Beach keeping track of the travels of members in the South Bay, and other local communities,” Billep says. “It’s a form of competition, and a way to meet new friends and people who love to constantly travel.”

The downside? There are a fair amount of divorces along the way if one spouse stays home too much.

Judy Reynolds has been married to Ed for 50 years, and they’re looking forward to their 51st this May and many more to come after that. She understands her husband’s passion for travel, it’s in his genes. She has the same passion for obedience training Shetland Sheepdogs.

“We’ve been to Asia and China together, but I go mostly on the cruises with him now,” says the retired high school English teacher. “Leaving my dogs in the kennel all the time was making me sick.”

Ed’s leaving April 1 for Myanmar and Bangladesh, a couple of hot spots in the world, but he’s not worried.

“I’ve never felt threatened anywhere,” says the Woodland Hills resident. “You just have to get a good guide and stay out of trouble. I was over in Libya solo on a work visa — the only way I could get in — but it was revoked after five days and I had to get out.

“I was on a ship that broke down in the Antarctica for eight days before we were rescued, and I was in the first group of Americans to tour Iraq in 2009. In Chad, they wouldn’t let us out of the city to visit the countryside.

“I’m not doing this just to see the world, but to meet people in different countries and understand them better,” Ed says. “I’ve found some of the friendliest people in the world live in some of the most dangerous places. They’re fearful of terrorists, like we all are.”

He rattles off some of his favorite places — Angkor Wat in Cambodia; the small Ivory Coast town of Yanoussoukro, where a full size replica of St. Peter’s Basilica has been built in the middle of nowhere; and Socotra Island off the coast of Yemen, an island of Doctor Seuss umbrella trees.

But his favorite place in the world to visit as a tourist?

“San Francisco,” the travelin’ man says.

Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Friday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.